I liked this book for its honesty. So often we get the overdramatised versions of real stories, where the producers and directors forget the actual human who lived through the events they are depicting. Books like this one are far more honest.

Yes, I understand that memories are not infallible, but there are some situations we live through that are hard to forget, and the detail in the recollections of these soldiers was startling. It's hard to imagine for me, as a non-combatant civilian to truly understand the many experiences they had and what they had to bring home with them--for those who made it home, but this book depicts those horrors and deprivations very well.

Not every story in this book is depressing, some are tinged with humour and some are simple accounts of things the general public might not be aware of, having not lived it themselves. Either way, this is an important book, as it gives in detail a piece of history that has been fading from memory for years. Recommended.

This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher, provided through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

Author James Goulty published the book “The Second World War Through Soldiers’ Eyes: British Army Life, 1939–1945′ Eyes ” in 2016. Mr. Goulty has published three books.

I categorize this book as ‘PG’. The book examines life in the British military during the years of WWII. This includes women serving in the nursing corps and the ATS.

The major questions answered: How were they trained? How were they transported to their theater of operation? How did they spend leisure time? What was their entertainment? What was medical care like? How was it to be a POW?

I enjoyed the 6.5+ hours I spent reading this 208-page history. There were many details but the book was easy to read. I do like the selected cover art. The focus was not on combat, but the life behind the battle lines. I give this book a 4 out of 5.

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As the title suggests, the book covers the entire Second World War from 1939 to 1945 in virtually every theatre of war and covers the distinct phases of a soldier's fighting career.
The author has skilfully collated hundreds of eye witness accounts into a very readable book. Many of the stories are quite graphic in their descriptions of battlefield scenes and the horrendous effects of various weapons on the human body. I have studied many aspects of WW2 but was unaware that around 70% of casualties were caused by artillery and mortar fire. Small arms fire accounts for a small proportion of deaths.
By the nature of this book, it is quite easy to dip-in and dip-out of without losing any of the overall context - a great benefit for those of us who are often strapped for time. However, be warned - some sections of the book are so absorbing it will be difficult for the reader to put down.

James Goulty has set an ambitious goal in attempting to convey a coherent account of individual soldiers’ experiences of life in the army between 1939 and 1946, as demobilised citizen soldiers returned to Britain. In large measure he succeeds and the account adds to the large volume of material that shares an attempt to capture these years of comradeship, drama, euphoria and terror. The author has collated and incorporated fragments of the individual soldiers’’ accounts under a series of chapters that provide a reasonable framework for the book. Inevitably Goulty limits the contributions to a necessarily small group of individual memoirs, which limits the book’s coverage. But any attempt to address this aspect would lead to a book that was much too unwieldy to read. It would be unreasonable to expect a work such as this to offer novel insights, but it does provide an easy to read and accessible insight into how citizens were swept up into the British Army and served across all theatres. Overall, it was an interesting read that is unlikely to leave readers disappointed. One small point did feature that troubled this reader; this related to British casualties in the Tunisian campaign, which could not be readily reconciled with other published data.

War is all too often romanticized focusing on the glory of victory or the stories of those who were left behind to keep the country moving in the right direction. The Second World War Through Soldiers' Eyes gives the reader a truthful account of what it was actually like to be a soldier in the British forces during World War Two. This book takes away all the adventures of war so often portrayed by Hollywood giving in-depth descriptions of what soldiers endured in just getting to various battlefields let alone the brutality of the war zone itself. This is a short book, consisting of five distinct aspects of soldiers experience during the war, following the call-up and training, the involvement of active service, what soldiers endured as prisoners of war and the experience a soldier went through if injured and other medical matters.

This reads a little like a textbook for those wishing to gain a greater understanding of the technical aspects of the recruitment process of soldiers with absolutely minimal human interest to whet the appetite for such knowledge. This is the experience reading the first couple of chapters where the intricacies of mortar shells and the incompetence’s of Army selection of recruits is given a great deal of interest. If the reader persists, the feeling of names, dates and facts fades away and there is a little more anthropological interest that becomes apparent.

There are sprinkled throughout the book tidbits of information about training methods such as spreading animal blood over the recruits to simulate battle situations to the weeding out people of the working classes from being chosen to be officers due to their inability to afford the necessities of privilege that such a rank demanded that gives an insight into the mindset of the British Army of the time. Throughout the book the various names of individual soldiers and their particular experiences are repeated over and over, giving insight to the breadth of research that lies as the foundation of this work. There is also repeating storylines of certain soldiers who gave detailed accounts of what the reality of the war experience was like for them.

Occasionally there is a kind of beauty in the memories recalled such as this piece by a former POW;

Our guards were surly little monsters grunting, growling and kicking blokes or hurrying them
along with their rifle butts. That image brought home to me that we were no longer proud
British soldiers, lords of all we surveyed, but the flotsam and jetsam of a defeated army.

Specific examples of Prisoners of War camps like the infamous Changi Prison are given in great detail. The insanity caused by hatred of the enemy of the Nazi soldiers against Allied POW in Europe was brutal, although the level of the madness of the Japanese prisons can only be described as breathtaking, the level of cruelty defying logical understanding, making the horror of WW2 all the more apparent.

Something not often highlighted in the history of WW2 is the estimated one million books donated by agencies such as YMCA or British Red Cross that were abandoned in POW camps when they were eventually liberated, an interesting tidbit found within the covers of this book. It is a moment of levity to read of the eventual conclusion of a certain copy of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen that will make the reader guffaw with either glee or horror! Also never making the Hollywood versions of European prison camps is the opportunity of soldiers to further their education with papers and exams being sent back to Britain by the Red Cross for assessment so that it was possible for a prisoner to complete a degree from institutions such as Cambridge University.

War is never an easy subject to focus on. ‘Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. ' The quote is most likely due to writer and philosopher George Santayana, and in its original form it read, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." It is important for generations to read and understand what war truly is like, to live through the experience as much as possible with the hope that such knowledge remains academic.

The Second World War Through Soldiers’ Eyes follows the accounts of several soldiers as they serve in the British Armed Forces throughout World War II, and the evolution of the army as it went from a disorganized civilian force to the more recognizable, massive powerhouse it became by the end of the war.

As an American person with a specific insterest in World War II military history, I was thankful to have read this book because it’s much easier to find firsthand accounts of the American involvement in the war, but finding any sources that are both reputable and accurate with regards to the rest of the world requires a little more effort. I love to see the similarities and the differences between both armies and I especially loved the opportunity to expand my worldview.

I especially appreciated the inclusion of the nurse corps in this book alongside the male troops.

The living memory of World War II is rapidly becoming even more and more rare so the personal anecdotes and immersion in the book was very well done and appreciated. This was a very accessible and easy to read book, without any sign of pretentiousness or any assumption that the reader is a master level historian upon first glance. It was a nice, middle of the road, unassuming account of the war and overall very well done.

I hope that this book is released in print in the States because I definitely want a copy for my bookshelves.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I very much appreciated the opportunity to read and review this superbly written book. My review will be posted on goodreads today; instagram, twitter, amazon feeds on release day; and in at least one youtube video (June wrap-up, which will be posted in the first week of July.)